U.S. biggest violator of non-Americans' human rights: China report

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BEIJING, Feb. 28 -- The Untied States is the world's biggest violator of human rights of non-American persons and has been strongly condemned for conducting surveillance and prisoner torture around the globe, a report on U.S. human rights said Friday.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2013 was released by the Information Office of China's State Council, or the Cabinet, in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013 issued by the U.S. State Department on Thursday.

A large number of overseas surveillance projects conducted by the U.S. violated other countries' sovereignty and the civil rights of their people, said the report.

The U.S. National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 leaders of other countries and collected five billion pieces of information every day through tracking cell phone movements around the world, China cited a classified document exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden as saying.

Frequent drone strikes by the U.S. have caused a large amount of non-American civilian casualties, said the report, adding the U.S. carried out 376 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, and up to 926 civilians were reported dead.

The U.S. tortures prisoners in other countries and regions, China said in the report, adding Guantanamo Bay detainees' human rights were severely damaged with many of them held there indefinitely without trial.

A total of 92 Guantanamo military prisoners joined in the hunger strike that began in February 2013, to protest indefinite incarceration and bad treatment, the report said.

"Force feedings were carried out. Inmates were chained to chairs by Army guards, tubes were inserted through their noses by Navy medical workers," it added.

The U.S. government authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to operate a secret detention program which involved the establishment of clandestine detention facilities on the territory of other states in 2001, the report said.

At least 136 individuals were reportedly extraordinarily rendered or secretly detained by the CIA.

"Despite wide criticism against the CIA's illegal action, no American official has so far been brought to justice," said the report.